Michael Loveday: Fallen Leaves

She slips past a gaggle of American tourists bickering over ice-creams. Parade Gardens, today, is livid with colour: cultivated borders and flowerbeds are rioting, tipping out of control. It’s beautiful, calming even. But not one of these holidaymakers has noticed. They want to see the Jane Austen Centre next. No, they are sick of history, want to unravel themselves at the Thermal Spa.
Bath seems a city constructed exclusively for tourists, fleeting students, and convalescents like her. Despite the Georgian stone, there’s a built-in transience among this population.
The village where she lived before, though petty, was deep-rooted. Residents hung around, for life. The thought pierces her. She has to extract it like a splinter.
She approaches the tree.

***

Alder Ash Aspen Common Beech Birch Blackthorn Box Buckthorn Cherry
Crab Apple Dogwood Elder Elm Hawthorn Hazel
Holly Hornbeam Juniper Lime
Maple Pear Scots Pine
Poplar Rowan
Spindle
Whitebeam
Willow
Yew

***

She opens her eyes, mid-song. Can sense tree sap pulsing through her. It feels good to grab at ancient wisdom, drag it towards her body. Let herself merge with this damp, bitter bark catching so roughly on her palms. Let blood trickle through root systems. Let her belong. Cells will insist, she cannot forget, on multiplying, mutating too fast if they choose, a secret that cannot be untold.
There has been time, at least, for trees. For this oak’s gnarled, ragged limbs, its greenness that comes and goes, its welcome umbrella of shade. Old, old witness to more than she can know: the pulse of slow decades ringing their patterns.
A tree climbs a little closer to God. We are all fallen leaves.
She feels the great hand of the unknown, ready to cradle her.